In this day, I'm a proud Debian user. (...STS-83 and STS-94 took Debian Linux to the orbit in 1997.) Open Source can into space!
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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And in contrast to other pieces of software, it seems to be working.
I perfer SMPlayer or just cli mpv, but I'm happy nonetheless.
VLC did come in handy for playing songs on my iPhone.
.....do you think they paid for winRAR tho??
No, because they're FOSS-pilled and chose 7zip?
Maybe because VLC is actually useful
Years ago I when I wrote software for a living, I had an argument with a colleague, and I tried to explain to him:
The "supported" closed-source library he wanted to use was pretty popular because it was marketed by a huge company with a marketing department, or because it had a first-mover advantage, or because there were training events and books built around it, etc.
The unsupported free open-source library I wanted to use was the most popular library of its kind in the whole world. And it got to that position without any of those advantages.
What does that suggest about their relative usefulness? The world of open source is closer to being a real meritocracy. The number one app or library is probably number one for non-structural reasons.
And that's why GenAI for code is gaining popularity.
It's not because it's better than free open-source libraries. It's because it's better marketed.
Eh, Claude's cutting edge frontier models are definitely better than the good open source models which lag a bit behind. The good open source models are still useful though but you'd get noticeably better performance with the closed model which is why even companies that are perfectly capable of locally hosting an open model choose to pay anthropic a premium.
Maybe but that wasn't my point. My point is that a lot of people now invest a LOT of resources, being token, money, time, etc to invent the wheel again. Instead of relying on e.g. Drupal they'll "generate" yet another CMS which will work (for a while, in theory) not because it's a good idea (IMHO it's not) but because it's been marketed as doable and even "better" on some aspects (e.g. customizable).
Ah, you're referring to local rewrites of utilities that already exist?
I agree that agents are making more in house utilities which can be wasteful. The shift certainly isn't helped by the increase in supply chain attacks though.
Yes, I didn't know the expression "local rewrites" but that seems to capture it well.
My bet it's another version of the inverse of Not Invented Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here where the IT department or a random manager claims that whatever was generated is "theirs" implying agency. They don't realize that each iteration will get harder and more expensive (bigger context window) while alternatives have accumulated thousands and thousands of "bugs" or even just usage highlighted limits of their implementation. So they are re-inventing their version at great cost and in the end the difference between what they worked on is basically equivalent of open source equivalents but with no community support and instead a dependency on models and infrastructure they don't own.
I think the main reason most companies choose closed source is because management gets a hard-on for the thought of having someone to complain to. If they can't call meetings with someone responsible and demand a quick fix, what use do they still have? All you can with open source is fix it yourself or create an issue. Neither requires a manager.
Many open source have paid support
Correct. Also, they need someone to delegate the responsibility to. They are mainly concerned with not being held responsible for any potential fuck-ups. If they can say "the vendor did it" they can deflect the blame. Unfortunately that's how making a career in the corporate world works for the vast majority of people. You advance by avoiding getting blamed for mistakes, not by brilliance or competence.
What? No!
The point is that it is impossible to have support of every single software you use in-house. So it is better to outsource it to companies who have specialized support on hand 24/7, and who have been solving those kinds of issues every single day of the year. They don't need to flip through the documentation in order to solve it.
In companies, a problem that causes the entire company from being unable to generate profit for 24hours costs way more than a support contract.
That's exactly my point?
This support stuff (for problems that occur often enough for anyone to build experience) is one thing I've found AI is pretty good at. Even more obscure issues, and especially open source stuff because it was probably trained on the source code as well as any public support forums.
So this might stop being a factor, or as big of one, when an intern and an AI can figure out most issues in an afternoon.
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Unlike Microslop Outlook, there's a program that doesn't break when you lose internet connection.
The asshats for some reason felt that they needed to reinvent it as basically a web app and it’s broken in so many ways, and I think it’s lost feature parity with mobile and Mac instead of gaining. Sheer incompetence.
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Gotta feel cool to have your software support the people doing the "real" work.
I pulled this off reddit. I know that's gross, but this was too good not to share.
Think of it this way:
Every time you steal from Reddit, you're saving thousands of Lemmy folks a visit there, and Spez loses more traffic.
Keep doing it.
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Somehow I feel more "represented" by VLC than I do by any of the astronauts.
I wonder why...
VLC: a free and open source video player meant to be used by literally everyone.
Astronauts: a select few chosen people with little to no health problems, in top physical and mental form one could only dream of having.
I think the Simpsons were on to something when they sent Homer to space.
I think we shouldn't make it looks like it's easy to be an astronaut. Those people are crazy. They are PhD smart and Olympic level fit. This does not come naturally.
Edit : and JB from VLC is probably one of the most interesting guy to listen to, if you find some of his talks/interviews
If only they had such high standards for the presidency
It is the year 2,002,026.
Humanity has conquered capitalism and moved off of Earth. Disease and accidental death have been eradicated. We've invented marvelous and miraculous technologies and used them to catapult ourselves to distant worlds.
It's an open question whether or not our descendants can rightly call themselves "human" anymore, and indeed some on far-flung planets do not.
On the planet Seffi, which we call Kepler-725c, one of those human descendants watches the end of a two-dimensional audiovisual narrative, a recent fad on the planet. They aren't watching it on a computer, per se, but on a holographic mesh device operating across a distributed cluster of nanomachines. The human descendant telepathically interfaced with it to launch the application and the narrative, and now xe marvels at how immersive and compelling the narrative was, despite being contained as it was within a two-dimensional non-interactive form.
A list of people who contributed to the construction of the narrative concludes its display, and the holomesh reverts to a waiting state, displaying a simple black panel within a white frame. And within that black panel, a small, orange-and-white triangle sits, perfectly centered. The human descendant doesn't know what it originally represented, and muses briefly about it before deactivating the holomesh and walking out of xeir home to enjoy the sunset beneath the purple-blue trees.
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